Sen. Marklein Column — Listening Session Summary

I just completed a series of eight listening sessions in the 17th Senate District – one in each county I represent. I held the sessions in Mauston, Reedsburg, Richland Center, Lancaster, Sylvester, Darlington, Cobb and Hillsboro. I was joined by Rep. Travis Tranel (R-Cuba City), Rep. Tony Kurtz (R-Wonewoc) and Rep. Todd Novak (Dodgeville). We heard from more than 270 people who shared a wide array of opinions, input and ideas. Each session had its own flavor. We heard a wide-range of topics that were often extremely regional. For example, in Lancaster, Darlington and Cobb, I heard a lot about the proposed wind farm and shared revenue. In Richland Center, the conversation was dominated by the UW System’s decision to step away from UW Platteville – Richland.

In Mauston and Reedsburg we mostly heard about broadband, the state surplus and ideas for the state budget. In Sylvester, we heard about a lot of different ideas including property taxes, veterans programs and rural EMS. In Hillsboro, I heard about more than a dozen different topics including trout stamps, school funding, local roads and housing.

First and foremost, I would like to thank everyone who attended and spoke at each session. I know it is an investment of your time and some of you overcame fears of public speaking to share your input with us. Everything we hear at a listening session matters. Every comment, idea, criticism and question is important. It helps us, as legislators, to know what is on your mind as we consider policy and spending decisions that will impact your daily life. be 21 years of age. It’s great to see our state legislators taking positive action to protect and promote good health in our state.

While we may not always agree, I want you to know that I want to hear from you. I cannot do this job without your input and ideas. The best legislation comes from the people who are living, working, volunteering and leading in our communities. You know what is necessary to move Wisconsin forward.

Following is a brief recap of some of the topics covered at our listening sessions. If you were unable to join us, please send me an email or call my team to share your input. I want to hear from you.

Wind Farms: Attendees were opposed to wind farms and current wind turbine siting regulations. They asked for legislation to revamp wind (and solar) siting so that local residents and communities have a role in determining wind farm siting. They also asked that the Wind Siting Council be held accountable to take action. Many speakers were concerned about adverse health effects, property values and destruction of quality of life for the people who live in our communities.

UW Platteville – Richland: Attendees were opposed to the UW System’s decision to end in-person instruction at the UW Platteville – Richland campus later this year. Like me, they were blind-sided by the decision to close the campus and they want answers. More than 100 people attended the Richland Center listening session to share their concerns.

This session was followed by a community forum that I attended on January 26, 2023.

Shared Revenue: Many local municipal and county leaders shared their concerns about the broken shared revenue formula. They told us that rising and inflationary costs have created impossible obstacles for local governments without a change for shared revenue calculations. They also said that while it might sound nice to pour more money into the program – it isn’t helpful to simply add to a broken formula. We need to find a new way to share costs with local governments.

State Surplus: Attendees gave us a lot of ideas for ways to spend the state surplus. Everything from roads to schools to tax cuts. I shared my concern that while the projected surplus is around $7 billion, a lot of these funds are one-time dollars. The real, ongoing surplus is approximately $3 billion. We must be careful to prevent spending ourselves into holes.

Robert C. Turner MD Reedsburg, Wisconsin

Bill Cary Richland Center, Wisconsin

time and effort to create a culture of fairness and dignity for everyone who enters his courtroom.

As we have done before in the great state of Wisconsin, we have the opportunity to make history and give Wisconsin its first elected Black Supreme Court Justice. While such a moment is long overdue, this election is about far more than making history, it’s about getting the best, most impartial jurist on the highest court in our state. We can do this. We must do this. On February 21st, vote Judge Everett Mitchell for the Wisconsin Supreme Court!

Amelia Royko Arena, Wisconsin

B.S. they keep hearing coming from the village. Don’t be afraid to find the contacts of the board members from all 3 entities: fire board, village board, town board).

All the minutes for all board meetings are public information and can be found on the website for both the Town and Village. We really need to start holding elected officials accountable before it's too late.

Steve Jahnke Arena, Wisconsin

com

• Everett Mitchell - judgeeverettmitchell.com

• Dan Kelly - justicedanielkelly.com

• Jennifer Dorow - judgejennifer.com

As a public service, several local libraries in southwestern Wisconsin have set up a display where you can pick up copies of materials about the Court, including a fun quiz the whole family can do together. (And while you are there, see all the wonderful resources they have.)

Claudia Looze Highland, Wisconsin

Property Taxes: Attendees shared concerns about property tax increases and school referenda. They were worried about the impact of increasing property taxes on older residents who live on fixed incomes.

Funding for Schools: Attendees asked us to send more funding to our schools. They cited increasing costs for staff and operations that are forcing districts to go to referendum.

Abortion: Attendees shared views on both sides of the issue. We heard from both prolife and pro-choice advocates.

Broadband Expansion: Attendees told us about both successful broadband expansion grant projects and the communities that still do not have service. The unserved communities continue to fight for expansion and seek assistance to bring broadband to their residents.

Again, I sincerely appreciate the time and effort of every attendee who joined us for a listening session. Thank you to everyone who took time out of their day to join us – and to listen to their neighbors. If you were unable to participate in a listening session, but have ideas or concerns, please do not hesitate to connect with me to provide input, ideas or to seek assistance. Send an email to sen.marklein@legis.wisconsin.gov or call 608-2660703. I want to hear from you.

Each edition, retired dairy farmer Barb Garvoille brings her musings on dairy farm life from her own years of experience on Lost Horizon Farm with her late husband Vince “Mr. Farmer” Garvoille. This mooving memoir focuses on 19802000, join Barb as she rises with the herd.

A local feed mill’s radio advertisement announced to farmers that the mill's gate would always be open to them and followed that welcoming thought with: "Have an interesting day." The day a heifer was brought into the barn for the first time was always an interesting day at Lost Horizon Farm. A heifer is a female bovine that is called such until she has had her first calf. After calving, the animal became a cow or “one of the girls,” as Mr. Farmer would say.

Daily visual inspection of the cattle and the breeding wheel would help a person monitor "springing" (close to calving) animals. Springing cows or heifers would "bag up;" their udders would fill out; sometimes gradually, sometimes literally overnight, and, occasionally, after calving. We liked to have springing heifers in the barn for at least a week prior to their due date. That way the stress of acclimating to new accommodations, routines, and sounds had been ameliorated, and the animal had to face only the novel rigors of a first-time calving.

A bit of groundwork had to be done before the heifer was brought into the barn. The milking herd had to be in the barn. With a nearly full barn, there would be just one open stanchion that the new animal could be directed into. Tying a series of baler twine strings together, a rope pull was fashioned. (One end was knotted in place on the moveable side of the stanchion yoke, its length was then draped over the back of the neighboring cow. Ideally, after the heifer had walked into the stanchion and centered its head in the stanchion; the positioned person would reach over the neighboring cow, rapidly jerk on the rope pull, and thus lock the surprised heifer in place.)

A fresh coat of barn lime would be applied to the walkway. The cow trainers would be turned off, and the trainer over the open stanchion would be temporarily removed. Chains would be drawn across each walkway alley to deter access to the managers. Outside the south entrance of the barn, a tractor hitched to the manure spreader was aligned parallel to the barn. A series of cattle gates were tied in place both in front of the tractor and behind the manure spreader so that both a barrier and also a path leading to the barn door were created.

When all these preparatory moves had been done, the chosen heifer had to be located and penned separately. If a person was lucky, all the young cattle would be close to the farm buildings. If not, we would have to walk out into the pasture, drive the young stock into the barnyard, and sort out the desired heifer. Isolating a single animal could be an exhausting experience because a herd animal perceives annexation from its herd mates as most unnatural. A heifer might try to run past or over humans, collide with or jump over gates to rejoin the herd, so a person had to be careful, calm, determined, and calculatingly quick. Some heifers had mastered the textbook on evasive maneuvers and provided additional challenges. The best method, as Mr. Farmer would say, was to "think like a cow." That meant that humans had to discern beforehand a perceived route of escape and try to be there to block it. Another advantageous strategy was to "look big;" that is to hold one's arms out to the side or above one's head to look sizable. Because the sorting process was unusual and unsettling for the heifer, the last thing a person wanted to do was to lose patience and, in so doing, make the animal even more frightened and unpredictable. Once a second consult of the calf identification book had affirmed that the separated creature was the correct heifer, one person's task would be to drive the animal from the pen, along the created pathway and into the barn. The other person would follow the heifer on the other side of the barrier and become an obvious and present deterrent at possible jumping-over places, like the space created by the hitch between the tractor and the manure spreader, anywhere the heifer might visualize an avenue of escape. Both persons carried a "cow stick," a bluntended fiberglass rod that could be used to either convince the animal to move ahead or to tum her head and, thus, her direction. Used judiciously, sticks would help keep the animal focused on walking up the alley and into the barn. Once the heifer had gone into the barn, the barn doors would be closed (sometimes quickly enough that they would nudge the heifer's rump), and the first part of the job would be done. The entrance of the new animal would cause every milk cow to stand and register her curiosity. Some cows would vocalize; others would turn their heads to look at the newcomer. The heifer would trek up and down the walkway stretching herself to sniff and nose new things. This brief exploratory time offered the heifer a chance to settle down, and it gave the person in the walkway a chance to eye the rope pull to make certain it was in the correct position. Meanwhile, the other person would walk into the manger, fill a scoop with cow feed and deliver it in front of the open stanchion. It worked best to do this just as the new heifer was about to pass by the open stanchion; the sight of the feed being poured, the sound of the grains falling onto the manger liner, and the aroma was attractive to the heifer because young stock rarely received much grain. The perfect scenario would have been: the grain would be enticing, the heifer would tum and walk into the stanchion, stick her head through the yoke of stanchion to eat, the rope pull would be yanked, and the heifer would be secured in her new place in the barn. In reality though, sometimes the heifer would be reluctant to go into a stanchion, sometimes she would put her front legs in the stanchion and refuse to bring her back legs up, sometimes the neighboring cow would be a nuisance, drop to her knees and eat the windfall of grain intended for the heifer; sometimes the heifer would walk through the stanchion and go right into the manger; sometimes the heifer would be in position and the rope pull would get caught up on something (like an unnoticed bolt head), and be rendered inoperative. Whether or not the procedure went perfectly, the instant the heifer realized she was locked in, she would try, quite forcefully, to back out of her stanchion. Mr. Farmer would either go alongside the heifer or in the manger in front of her, wrap a twine string several times around the top of the stanchion and knot it to make an additional stanchion lock. A newly stanchioned animal was understandably nervous and unpredictable, and whoever was making the additional twine stanchion lock had to be alert and proactive about protecting hands from injury. Contact between a hand and a thrashing cow’s skull or metal stanchion components was a recipe for an unforgiving traumatic injury.

If a new heifer came into the barn during the winter, as soon as she was locked in her stanchion, she would have her hair coat, heavy from being kept outdoors, clipped. The Sunbeam cow clippers would be plugged in, and the animal was confronted with yet another new sound. Standing behind the stanchion divider and next to a neighboring milk cow, a person would lean over, speak in a calming tone, and begin to clip the new heifer. There was never predictability in heifer behavior. Some heifers would try to push their bodies (and the person) into the cow next to them, some would move backwards and forwards in their stanchion, and some would do all of the previously mentioned things and kick too! Some heifers would become very placid, almost catatonic, once they determined that being clipped felt good. Behavior varied with each individual; sometimes the heifer that went easily into a stanchion on the first try was very jumpy about being clipped.

Daily turnout was a feature at Lost Horizon Farm; however, a new heifer stayed locked in her stanchion for a couple of days until accustomed to the new environment. Within a day, the cow trainer could be replaced, and the heifer would learn to become conditioned to that. Each time someone walked in the manger, that person would depress the paddle of the new animal's drinking cup and make sure the cup was filled. This continued until someone saw that the heifer had figured out how to use the drinking cup herself. (The waterers outdoors had a ball that had to be pushed down to access water rather than a paddle that needed to be depressed.)

Each time the cows were milked on either side of the new heifer, the milker would move in a slower, more circumspect way. The loud hum of the compressor, the pulsating of the milkers, the snaps of the milker canes coming out of the pipeline, and the squawk of a slipping teat cup were some of the host of new sounds the new animal had to get used to during milking. After the heifer had demonstrated a certain level of composure, while the cows on either side of her were being milked, the milker would begin to wash her udder to acclimate her to that first step in the milking process. Scratching the top line of the animal or just speaking to her in quiet tones would help in the adjustment process too. The more comfortable the heifer felt in the barn, and the more tolerant she was of human presence and touch, the easier and safer it would be to handle her once she had calved and needed to be milked.

Barb has called Lost Horizon Farm, just north of Spring Green, her home for the past 42 years. She is fond of all creatures (including snakes). Her joy stems from being able to be outdoors every day observing and treasuring the plant and animal life on her small piece of this planet. She loved milking cows and is proud to have been a dairy farmer.